LogFAQs > #975242206

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One Week

I have now been a widow for one week. How are you doing? Its the main question I get asked now and I dont honestly know how to really answer. What do you compare it to? Ive never lost anyone super close to me, not really. Ive had a friend commit suicide and though we were close, we were not best friends or anything like that. Not how it was with my wife. Beyond being my partner she was my best friend. I lost both. Im not crying as much, am I doing better? I can sleep, eat, take care of myself. Does that mean I am doing better than one might expect?

Its the quiet that gets to me, what I took for granted. Ive always been a social person. I like having that other human being beside me. As a child I had my little sister play in the same room while I played video games. I cherish experiencing life with another, and that is now gone. Not on a macro level, but in my home. The place where I felt the most comfortable, confident, and loved is now just a memory of those things. I suppose it will improve as the days and weeks turn into months. At least I hope so. Right now it just feels so quiet, so still. We werent the type of people to go out to parties or anything like that, but within our space was an energy, you know? My wife was trapped in a broken body but together we filled this space with so much energy. I didnt realize how much of my energy was generated in response to hers. Yin and Yang or however you want to phrase it, Im missing half of my energy.

I fill the void with YouTube, TV shows, video games, movies... all the same things I would have done with her sharing in it all with me as we shared our lives. Is it wrong for me to fear I will never find that again? Beyond the pain and grief of missing your lover and best friend, there is this intense fear that you will never find anything even close to that again. It can cripple you if you let it. My wife wanted me to find it again and the logical side of me knows I will, but what if? Is it disrespectful to want to fill this void quickly? To find someone else to love and put all my efforts into being a duo against the world?

There are other people in my world I care about deeply... and I worry that if I express to them how much I care they will rebuke me for not taking enough time. I will miss my wife forever. Absolutely forever. That doesnt negate my ability to find joy and love in another. Ive loved before my wife and I will after my wife.

I keep finding documents in regards to my wifes medical. While living it every day it didnt really hit me how sick she was. I have an entire ream of paper that is all to do with medical diagnoses, appointments, payments, results, testing. She was so sick and struggled for so long just for me. Im glad that she did so and allowed me to spend so much time with my best friend. It was the greatest sign of selflessness Ive ever been given. For someone else to live in pain for you? I sure hope that I earned that selflessness. That I was worthy of that kind of love. She certainly didnt seem to think she earned that kind of love from me... she was always questioning how I could stay with her. How I could put all my money and time, all my energy, into a failing person? That was just as much her own childhood trauma as it was anything else. My wife led a life that was filled with pain of many kinds, and just when she found a person who would accept her unconditionally forever, her body starts to fail.

So going back to the question; How am I? Im a 39 year old widow and Im scared. Thats how I am right now. I know Im not alone; I have an amazing support system around me. A wonderful family, amazing friends. But Im scared. Is that OK Lindsay? Can I be scared? Please tell me thats OK.

9 Days

I met with Jodi today, the only other person in existence who knows Lindsay and I both as individuals and as a couple. Lindsay didnt let a lot of people into her world as she expected people to let her down, to toss her aside. We spent 11 years together daily and to the very last day she expected me to turn around one day and leave her behind. Jodi knew her even longer than I did. The very injury that she sustained that had her sit in the back of the class with me, she went to Jodi to start rehabbing. To say that she knows us as a couple and as individuals, I mean it.

She hugged me as I entered the door, which was necessary. Beyond our home there were very few safe places that were OUR place, and Jodis was one of those places. As I left the home to go to a safe place, a place of healing and unconditional support and friendship, how much this relationship means to me is beyond words.

We spoke about healing, about loss and grief and how that looks. As a medical practitioner she has seen her fair share so I know it isnt platitudes. She told me how strong I am and have always been, to be the constant support, in every way, to a disabled partner, and then to a dying partner. I logically know these things, I really do... but Jodi telling me these things just means the world to me. Again, she has seen it all. She has seen people having to back away from the burden, and not even in a negative way as much as just its a reality how much someone can take. No judgment, nothing like that.

She told me she has never seen something like what we had. The physical, mental, spiritual toll that Lindsay overcome day after day and my endurance and strength to be the person she needed me to be, day after day. In moments when I am overcome with grief and sorrow, knowing how strong a person I have been and can be will really help me to feel those feelings I need to feel without being overcome.

We talked about signs. Im not a religious person, or even so-much of a spiritual person. On the plane ride home from Vancouver, on a flight absolutely jam packed full, with multiple people waiting from previous cancelled flights, the seat beside me was the only one left empty. Im still not a spiritual person, but maybe that was Lindsays sign that she was fine, and that I would be fine with that seat that had been perpetually filled beside me the last 12 years being empty. While Jodi worked with me, I received e-mail confirmation that my wifes remains were sent on their way from Vancouver to Saskatoon. While Jodi worked on me, the same place that I plan to spread her ashes.

Signs.

Lindsay wanted us both to know that she was all good and ready to take her new place at our sides.

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